24

After last weekend’s beach adventure that saw the return of Cherry Man, I spent the last week recovering. Monday and Tuesday were given over to slathering massive amounts of green aloe vera gel on my sunburned face in a desperate attempt to try and speed the recovery process, and Wednesday and Thursday were spent shedding skin like Sam is shedding fur. Gross, yes, but at least I was sunburn free for my birthday on Friday.

Friday was my birthday, and I only had to work a half day. In something of a tradition, I brought in breakfast.

Working half days is pretty much the same thing as a half day of school; you spend most of it eagerly waiting for noon, and most of what you deal with is pretty simple and half-baked. I even had a customer call with a virus, but he had waited to call me until he got our remote support tool running, and the virus was such a half-baked effort that I was able to kill it in 5 minutes. It was awesome.

Once I got out of work I did some grocery shopping for Saturday night, and then my friend from Kalamazoo came up for a little Battlestar Galactica, and we cracked open the birthday mead a coworker had brought in for me. Sam did not have any, but he was quite curious about it.

That evening I went out with friends, first to Butch’s with some coworkers, and then later on to the Brew Pub.

The next evening I had a couple of friends over for a little dinner party at my parents’ place.

The menu:

Bruchetta on grill-toasted french bread
Grilled killer garlic shrimp
Bourbon-Dijon marinated flank steak
Grilled asparagus
Garlic mashed redskin potatoes
Garlic-scented tomato salad

For dessert? Vodka soaked gummy bears. It was so much fun putting all that stuff together, and it made me miss my grill that much more.

Fortunately though, the weekend is only half over. My apartment is still a disastrous mess from the last week, but with a tornado watch out and storms on their way, it looks like I’ve got a good reason to stay inside and get some housework done.